Sunday, November 28, 2010

"These are perilous times for liberal humanists like philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who find their craft besieged from all sides: by metrics-minded education reformers, by pundits and politicians fretting about U.S. competitiveness in the sciences and engineering, by university administrators faced with budget cuts and shrinking endowments, wondering whether they really need that historian of early Guatemalan kilns on the payroll.

Nussbaum, an eclectic scholar whose last book explored the theme of disgust as it related to the gay-marriage debate, thinks that they do. The liberal arts, Nussbaum argues in her latest book, Not for Profit, are essential to the development of empathy, tolerance, and critical thinking, traits and skills that don't translate easily into numbers but that are crucial for society. In the rush to retool the American education system in the image of an ever-more-cutthroat global economy, she worries, "values precious for the future of democracy … are in danger of getting lost.""

Normativity is the most everyday phenomenon. Yet it poses major problems for philosophical analysis. It everydayness can be seen from the fact that, even though we are not directly forced to do so, we regard ourselves as bound by a variety of norms, values and rules in our thought and action – for instance social conventions of politeness, a professional ethos, bonds of friendship, promises that must be kept, right up to general moral norms. Even in the case of legally binding norms, different explanations are offered of the grounds of their validity. The central question concerning normativity is: What is the source of the binding power of such norms, values and rules? Is it based on instrumental considerations, social expectations, autonomous self-commitment or on a normative reality beyond the empirical world, which may be explicable only in metaphysical terms?

Monday, November 15, 2010

Abstract: Using as an exemplar, the 2007 "Evangelical Declaration against Torture," this paper examines the role of religious argument in public life. The Declaration was drawn up by David Gushee, University Professor at Mercer University, and others. It argues for an absolute ban on the use of torture deploying unashamedly Christian rhetoric, some of it quite powerful and challenging. For example, it says: " [T]he Holy Spirit participates in human pathos with groans and sighs too deep for words. The cries of the tortured are in a very real sense, … the cries of the Spirit." The present paper considers whether there is any affront to the duties of political civility in arguing in these terms. There is a line of argument, associated with John Rawls's book, "Political Liberalism," suggesting that citizens should refrain from discussing issues of public policy in religious or deep-philosophical terms that are not accessible to other citizens. The present paper challenges the conception of inaccessibility on which this Rawlsian position is based. It argues, with Jurgen Habermas, that all sides in a modern pluralist society have a right to state their views as firmly and as deeply as they can, and all sides have the duty to engage with others, and to strain as well as they can to grasp others' meanings. It is not enough to simply announce that one can not understand religious reasons, especially if no good faith effort has been made, using the ample resources available in our culture, to try. Of course, many peoeple will not be convinced by the reasons that are offered in religious discourse; but to argue for their rejection - which is always what may happen in respectable political deliberation - is not to say that the presentation of those reasons was offensive or inappropriate.

David A. Reidy is Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Political Science, University of Tennessee. Reidy is currently working on three books on John Rawls: - John Rawls: A Democratic Vision for the American Tradition.- The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon. Co-edited with Jon Mandle.- The Blackwell Companion to Rawls. Co-edited with Jon Mandle.

Monday, November 08, 2010

Abstract"Is a feminist political liberalism possible? Political liberalism’s regard for a wide range of comprehensive doctrines as reasonable makes some feminists skeptical of its ability to address sex inequality. Indeed, some feminists claim that political liberalism maintains its position as a political liberalism at the expense of securing substantive equality for women. We claim that political liberalism’s core commitments actually restrict all reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that secure genuine substantive equality for all, including women and other marginalized groups. In particular, we argue that political liberalism’s criterion of reciprocity limits reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that eliminate social conditions of domination and subordination relevant to reasonable democratic deliberation among equal citizens and that the criterion of reciprocity requires the social conditions necessary for recognition respect among persons as equal citizens. As a result, we maintain that the criterion of reciprocity limits reasonable political conceptions of justice to those that provide genuine equality for women along various dimensions of social life central to equal citizenship."

Christie Hartley is Assistant Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Georgia State University.

Lori Watson is Assistant Professor and Director of the Gender Studies Program, Department of Philosophy, University of San Diego.

Abstract:"This essay surveys varieties of the luck egalitarian project in an exploratory spirit, seeking to identify lines of thought that are worth developing further and that might ultimately prove morally acceptable. I do not attend directly to the critics and assess their concerns; I have done that in other essays*. I do seek to identify some large fault lines, divisions in ways of approaching the task of constructing a theory of justice or of conceiving its substance. These are controversial in the sense that in the present state of discussion it is unclear how best to view them or to which side it is better to scramble. But in the end of course I’m not a moral geographer and map-maker, just an involved spectator/tourist offering yet another view of the cathedral."

Thursday, November 04, 2010

The notion of "the public sphere" has become increasingly central to theories and studies of democracy, media, and culture over the last few decades. It has also gained political importance in the context of the European Union's efforts to strengthen democracy, integration, and identity. The Idea of the Public Sphere offers a wide-ranging, accessible, and easy-to-use introduction to one of the most influential ideas in modern social and political thought, tracing its development from the origins of modern democracy in the Eighteenth Century to present day debates. This book brings key texts by the leading contributors in the field together in a single volume. It explores current topics such as the role of religion in public affairs, the implications of the internet for organizing public deliberation, and the transnationalisation of public issues.

Contents

Editors' Introduction

I: The Enlightenment and the Liberal Idea of the Public Sphere

Immanuel Kant: An Answer to the Question: "What is Enlightenment?"G.W.F. Hegel: Excerpt from Philosophy of RightJ.S. Mill: Excerpt On Liberty

II: "Mass Society", Democracy and Public Opinion

Walter Lippmann: Excerpt from The Phantom PublicJohn Dewey: Excerpt from The Public and its ProblemsJoseph Schumpeter: Excerpt from Capitalism, Socialism and DemocracyCarl Schmitt: Excerpt from The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy

III: The Public Sphere Rediscovered

Hannah Arendt: Excerpt from The Human ConditionJürgen Habermas: "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopaedia Article" Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge: Excerpt from Public Sphere and ExperienceNancy Fraser: "Rethinking the Public Sphere"

IV: The Public Sphere and Models of Democracy

Jon Elster: "The Market and the Forum: Three Varieties of Political Theory" Niklas Luhmann: "Societal Complexity and Public Opinion" Jürgen Habermas: Excerpt from Between Facts and NormsJohn Rawls: "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited"

V: Current Challenges

Bernhard Peters: "National and Transnational Public Spheres" James Bohman: "Expanding Dialogue" Chantal Mouffe: "Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?" Seyla Benhabib: Excerpt from The Claims of CultureJürgen Habermas: "Religion in the Public Sphere"

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Abstract: This paper considers the relation between theories of justice (like John Rawls’s theory) and theories of socio-economic rights. In different ways, these two kinds of theory address much the same subject-matter. But they are quite strikingly different in format and texture. Theories of socio-economic rights defend particular line-item requirements: a right to this or that good or opportunity (e.g., housing, health care, education, social security). Theories of justice tend to involve a more integrated normative account of a society’s basic structure (though they differ considerably among themselves in their structure). So how exactly should we think about their relation? The basic claim of the paper is that we should strive to bring these two into closer relation with one another, since it is only in the context of a theory of justice that we can properly assesses the competition that arises between claims of socio-economic right and other claims on public and private resources.

Abstract: There is a considerable literature on the issue of hate speech. And there is a considerable literature on religious toleration (both contemporary and historic). But the two have not been brought into relation with one another. In this paper, I consider how the argument for religious toleration extends beyond a requirement of non-persection and non-establishment. I consider its application to the question of religious vituperation. The focus of the paper is on 17th and 18th century theories. Locke, Bayle and other Enlightenment thinkers imagined a tolerant society as a society free of hate speech: the kind of religious peace that they envisaged was a matter of civility not just non-persecution. The paper also considers the costs of placing limits (legal or social limits) on religious hate-speech: does this interfere with the forceful expression of religious antipathy which (for some people) the acceptance of their creed requires?

"Sen is mainly concerned with adressing existing injustices. He considers Rawls's ideal theory irrelevant for his purpose: for addressing injustices in the real world, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to know what a perfectly just society is. (....) To address real-world issues, we should assess and rank in order actual, realizable states of affairs from an impartial point of view, and then choose the best alternatives according to the degree that they embody justice and other important social values. Sen says that a precondition for reliability of our choices is that we engage in public reasoning with other impartial individuals.(....)

To contend that there is no need for ideal theory suggests that we should be satisfied with the alternatives currently on offer and haven't any reason to think about long-term or extensive reforms. The Whigs had no need of John Locke's radical social contract doctrine to justify the English Revolution of 1688. But Locke's main ideas - the people are sovereign; government originates in their content; government's power is fiduciary and exercisable only for the common good; citizens have inalienable rights justifying a right of resistance when violaled - supplied the conceptual frame for our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and subsequently for many others. Whether ideal principles of justice are necessary depends upon one's aims and long-term perspective.

Even in the short term, ideal principles are often called upon to motivate people toward political reform. Consider the galvanizing effects of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. The aspirations King appealed to were grounded in political ideals and ideal principles and could not have been conveyed by focusing on practicable alternatives offered up by the status quo."